Architects and other designers of homes and other architectural structures traditionally have used drafting techniques to create architectural designs. Such techniques are similar to those of the artist, who draws landscapes and portraits using points and lines. In fact, many architects view themselves first and foremost as artists, and architectural schools continue to base their curricula on an artistic foundation.
Architects who use such traditional techniques would draw a blueprint for a room, for example, by using pencil and paper to draw lines representing the walls of the room. The lines are interconnected to form rectangles and other polygons. Changing the size, shape, location, or orientation of a room requires erasing and redrawing one or more of the lines which make up the room. If multiple rooms have already been drawn, then modifying one room may impact other rooms. As a result, modifying one room may require erasing and redrawing the lines that make up many rooms. Determining where to redraw such lines can be difficult, particularly if the rooms have complex shapes, such as pentagons, or if they are interconnected with each other at unusual angles. As these examples illustrate, traditional architectural drafting techniques are tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone, and are not well-suited for modifying a design quickly and easily after it has been drawn. The problems associated with such techniques are magnified when they are applied to three-dimensional, rather than two-dimensional, drafting.
In response to these and other problems, computer-aided design (CAD) software has long been used to automate and thereby simplify various aspects of the architectural drafting process. At its core, however, conventional architectural CAD software continues to be based on points and lines. Such software, in essence, is a tool for automating the process of drawing points and lines. Although such automation represents some improvement over drafting performed using pencil and paper, conventional CAD software still relies upon the skill and labor of the human architectural draftsman to locate and draw the necessary points and lines of the entire design, and to re-locate and re-draw points and lines throughout a design in response to any changes within the design. As a result, the task of the human architectural draftsman who uses traditional CAD software remains tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone.